Congo-Brazzaville’s 82-year-old President Denis Sassou Nguesso has signaled plans to prepare the country’s younger generation of leaders as he campaigns for re-election in the March 15 presidential poll.
In an interview in the southern city of Dolisie, Sassou Nguesso emphasized that the current leadership is laying the foundation for a smooth transition to younger leaders in the future.
“We want young people to understand that all the work we are doing is also to prepare the conditions for their arrival, because we will not remain in power forever and their turn will come,” he said. “They need to train themselves, they need to learn to work hard.”
Having ruled the oil-rich Central African nation for more than four decades in total, Sassou Nguesso faces six other candidates in a race where the fragmented opposition is widely seen as unlikely to secure victory.
Responding to criticism over persistent poverty, the president rejected claims that the country’s natural resource wealth has been squandered. “We cannot say that people are below the poverty line while resources are abundant and have been squandered. No. Or even wasted. No,” he said. “They have been used to bring the country to its current level one it did not have at all when our country gained independence.”
Nearly half of Congo-Brazzaville’s six million citizens live below the poverty line despite significant oil revenues.
Sassou Nguesso also addressed the status of two former presidential candidates, General Jean-Marie Michel Mokoko and André Okombi Salissa, who remain in detention following convictions for undermining national security. “They are not going to die in prison. One day we will release them,” he said, while rejecting the notion that they are political opponents.
If re-elected, Sassou Nguesso has indicated this would be his final five-year term under the constitution. He declined to name a successor, emphasizing that preparations for the country’s future are being handled “in a broad and holistic way.”
